During the last two years, I’ve devoted my photography practice to the theme of migration in the southernmost border of Europe. I have started to trace the path that many migrants have covered to reach the two Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, two cities located on the coast of North Africa surrounded by Morocco. Because of their unique geographical location, both of them have become over the years a major staging post for thousands of Africans migrants that try to reach the European soil.
"I was so scared. I had many difficulties in the water. I reached a level where I was not able to move. I prayed to God: I said, God! Please help me, I'm dying!". Cheng Celestene, 19 years old from Cameroon.
Survivors. Heroes from a contemporary Odyssey that won't end up in any books, if none dares to tell it.
Histories of overcoming, braveness and fearlessness. The courage to leave everything, look behind you and see nothing.
As a photographer and storyteller, I feel a special attraction for the histories where the human being fight in extreme situations, to trying to change his destiny. We often are fascinated by heroes and adventures in the movies, and we don’t realize that these same heroes are much closer to us than we might think. In Ceuta, I’ve known Sani, a twenty years old guy from Chad. He had to escape when the rebel militia invaded his village, and since then he is on travel. Some months in Niger, others in Cameroon and then the big desert. Now he is stuck in the limbo of Ceuta, he can’t come back neither I can reach Europe.
I’ve then travelled around the border of Melilla. In the forests and on the mountains that surrounded Nador, the first Moroccan city after the 6 meters fences that divide the two countries, groups of Sub-Saharan migrants survive and wait for the right moment to cross illegally this last barrier. The Moroccan Police and the Army constantly harass them and often during the night they made raids throughout the migrants camp in order to deport them at the border with Algeria. I’ve never seen in my life people so scared and at the same time so determined to change their lives.
I’ve also photographed the Institutions that play a fundamental role in the so called safe guard of the integrity of the European perimeter. I’ve been patrolling the border fence with Spanish Guardia Civil in Melilla and I’ve spent 2 days inside the C.E.T.I. (Temporary Holding Centres for Immigrants) a very contentious place, that seldom has been photographed.
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